BOE to pay off school construction bills

North Oconee High

The Oconee County Board of Education approved its final payment on North Oconee High School Monday at its regularly scheduled board meeting.

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The final payment of $362,148.50 will be made to Winter Construction Co, the high school project's general contractor.

Doug Eza, Oconee's interim superintendent, performed a final walk-through inspection at the 230,000-square-foot school last week. All major work at the school was complete, he said.

But the school system is not paying Winter the last $49,000 it owes the company until several small details at the school are cleared up, Eza added. "Generally when you get to the final punch list, it's the little things - like having a wall that's not painted quite right," he said. "They're a few little things at the high school, $20 here and $20 there, but they have to fix them. In this case its about $25,000 worth of stuff, so we're withholding (final) payment."

The biggest issue with the building is a lack of replacement parts, Eza said.

Winter Construction was supposed to leave the high school with 50 boxes of vinyl floor tiles. Instead, it left 10 boxes of tiles, said Eza. There also was less baseboard molding and fewer wooden floorboards than the school system and Winter had agreed on, he added.

The school system will pay the final bill when Winter provides the replacement stock, which company representatives have agreed to do, Eza said.

The total cost of North Oconee High School was about $27 million. While most of the money for the project was provided by a local sales tax, the state also contributed $6.5 million.

In other business Monday, the board approved the final payments to the lighting contractors, roofing contractors and air-conditioning contractors involved in the construction of North Oconee High School, which totaled about $500,000.

The board also approved a $108,000 contract with Athens Janitorial for cleaning and bathroom supplies and custodian management services for its nine schools and other facilities.

Board members also approved the purchase of two greenhouse buildings for the agricultural education programs at Malcom Bridge Middle School and North Oconee High School. The two greenhouses cost $90,804, $60,000 of which is coming from local sales tax. The remainder of cost should be paid for by state funding, Eza said.